ENERGY STAR Score for Senior Living Communities

The ENERGY STAR Score for Senior Living Communities applies to buildings that house and provide care and assistance for elderly residents. The objective of the ENERGY STAR score is to provide a fair assessment of the energy performance of a property relative to its peers, taking into account the climate, weather, and business activities at the property. To identify the aspects of building activity that are significant drivers of energy use and then normalize for those factors, a statistical analysis of the peer building population is performed. The result of this analysis is an equation that will predict the energy use of a property, based on its experienced business activities. The energy use prediction for a building is compared to its actual energy use to yield a 1 to 100 percentile ranking of performance, relative to the national population.

• Property Types. The ENERGY STAR score for senior living communities applies to buildings that house and provide care and assistance for elderly residents. The score applies to an entire senior living community whether it is a single building or a campus of buildings.
• Reference Data. The analysis for senior living communities is based on data from an industry survey conducted by the Assisted Living Federation of America, American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, the American Health Care Association, and the National Center on Assisted Living.
• Adjustments for Weather and Business Activity. The analysis includes adjustments for:
  • Number of Units
  • Resident Capacity
  • Number of Workers
  • Number of Personal Computers
  • Number of Commercial Refrigeration Units
  • Number of Commercial Washing Machine Units
  • Number of Residential Washing Machine Units
  • Number of Electronic Lifts
  • Weather and Climate (using Heating and Cooling Degree Days, retrieved based on Zip code)
  • Percent of the Building that is Heated and Cooled
• Release Date. The ENERGY STAR score for senior living communities was released in March 2011.

This document presents details on the development of the 1 - 100 ENERGY STAR score for senior living communities. More information on the overall approach to develop ENERGY STAR scores is covered in our Technical Reference for the ENERGY STAR Score, available at www.energystar.gov/ENERGYSTARScore. The subsequent sections of this document offer specific details on the development of the ENERGY STAR score for senior living communities.